Software Alternatives & Startups

Obsidian VS Google Forms

Compare Obsidian VS Google Forms and see what are their differences

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Obsidian logo Obsidian

A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

Google Forms logo Google Forms

Simple web forms from Google.
  • Obsidian Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01
  • Google Forms Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-31

Obsidian features and specs

  • Local-first
    Obsidian stores your notes locally on your device, giving you full control over your data and enhancing privacy.
  • Markdown Support
    Obsidian uses Markdown, making it easy to format text and compatible with many other text editors and tools.
  • Bidirectional Linking
    You can create bidirectional links between notes, which helps in building a knowledge graph and navigating related information more easily.
  • Customizability
    Obsidian is highly customizable with community plugins, themes, and various settings to fit different workflows.
  • Graph View
    Provides a visual graph view of your notes and their connections, aiding in understanding relationships and discovering insights.
  • Offline Access
    Since the notes are stored locally, you can access and edit them without an internet connection.

Possible disadvantages of Obsidian

  • Learning Curve
    Obsidian can be complex and overwhelming for beginners due to its extensive features and customizable nature.
  • Sync Limitations
    While local-first is great for privacy, it requires additional steps or third-party solutions for syncing across devices.
  • No True Real-time Collaboration
    Obsidian lacks native real-time collaboration features, making it less suitable for collaborative work compared to cloud-based solutions.
  • Limited Mobile Features
    The mobile version of Obsidian, while functional, is not as robust as the desktop application, potentially hindering productivity on the go.
  • Dependence on Plugins
    Many advanced features require the use of third-party plugins, which could lead to compatibility issues and reliance on community support.
  • Performance on Large Vaults
    Performance might degrade with a very large number of notes or complex graphs, impacting usability.

Google Forms features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Google Forms offers a simple and intuitive interface, making it easy for users of all skill levels to create forms quickly.
  • Integration with Google Sheets
    Responses collected through Google Forms can be automatically sent to Google Sheets, facilitating data analysis and record-keeping.
  • Templates
    Google Forms provides a variety of pre-built templates that can be used as a starting point, saving time on form creation.
  • Collaboration Features
    Multiple users can collaborate in real-time on the creation and editing of forms, enhancing teamwork and productivity.
  • Free to Use
    Google Forms is free to use, making it an accessible tool for individuals and organizations without budget constraints.
  • Conditional Logic
    Supports conditional logic (skipping logic), allowing the form to change based on user responses.
  • Customization Options
    Users can customize the appearance of forms with themes, colors, and images to match their brand or personal style.
  • Accessibility and Mobile-Friendly
    Forms are responsive and can be accessed on various devices, including smartphones and tablets.

Possible disadvantages of Google Forms

  • Limited Customization
    While Google Forms offers basic customization, there are limitations in comparison to paid survey tools that allow for more advanced design capabilities.
  • Functionality for Advanced Data Collection
    Google Forms may lack some advanced data collection features such as advanced branching logic and question piping that are available in premium survey tools.
  • Limited Response Types
    Although it supports a variety of question types, it may not cover all niche functionality needs, such as certain interactive question formats.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As with any Google product, there may be concerns regarding data privacy and security, especially for sensitive information.
  • No Offline Access
    Google Forms requires an internet connection to create and respond to forms, limiting its use in offline environments.
  • Email Login Required
    Respondents may need to sign in with a Google account to complete certain forms, which can be a barrier for some users.
  • Limited Reporting Tools
    The built-in reporting features are basic, and users may need to export data to other tools for more in-depth analysis.

Analysis of Obsidian

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Obsidian.md is an excellent tool for users looking for a versatile and powerful note-taking application. Its unique features such as backlinking, markdown support, and robust customization options make it a favorite among knowledge management enthusiasts.

Why this product is good

  • Obsidian.md is considered good by many users because it is a powerful knowledge management and note-taking application that leverages Markdown for document formatting. It allows for bi-directional linking between notes, which helps in creating a network of interconnected ideas, often described as a 'second brain.' Its ability to support plugins, themes, and robust graph visualization also adds to its appeal. Additionally, it stores notes locally, ensuring privacy and data ownership, while being cross-platform compatible across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Recommended for

  • Knowledge workers who need a powerful tool to organize and connect their thoughts.
  • Students who are looking to create a structured and visually interconnected note system.
  • Writers and researchers who benefit from linking related ideas and maintaining detailed notes.
  • Tech-savvy users or developers who appreciate the local storage and open ecosystem for plugins and customization.

Analysis of Google Forms

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Google Forms is generally considered good, especially for individuals or organizations looking for a straightforward and effective way to gather information and feedback. It is reliable, user-friendly, and offers sufficient features for most basic to intermediate needs.

Why this product is good

  • Google Forms is a popular tool due to its ease of use, intuitive interface, and seamless integration with other Google services. It allows users to quickly create surveys, quizzes, and forms without needing advanced technical skills. The tool is accessible from any device with internet access, making it convenient for users on the go. Furthermore, it offers a variety of question types, customizable templates, and real-time response collection and analysis, which enhances its functionality.

Recommended for

  • Educators for quizzes and surveys in classrooms
  • Businesses for gathering customer feedback
  • Event planners to collect RSVPs and preferences
  • Researchers conducting simple surveys
  • HR teams for internal feedback and employee satisfaction surveys

Obsidian videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Google Forms videos

Review Google Forms responses

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Google Forms Full Tutorial From Start To Finish - How To Use Google Forms
  • Review - A tour of Google Forms

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Obsidian and Google Forms)
Note Taking
100 100%
0% 0
Forms And Surveys
0 0%
100% 100
Knowledge Management
100 100%
0% 0
Surveys
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Obsidian and Google Forms

Obsidian Reviews

  1. The kind of software that may change your life

    Perhaps you know someone who swears by Obsidian, it may seem like a cult of overly devoted people for how passionate they are, but it's not without reason

    I've been using Obsidian for over 3 years, at a point in my life when I felt I had to handle too much information and I felt like grasping water not being able to remember everything I wanted, language learning, programming, accounting, university, daily tasks. A friend recommended it to me next to Notion (of which he is a passionate cultist priest) and I reluctantly picked it and fell in love almost immediately.

    Obsidian seems very simple, like a notepad with folder interface, similar to Sublime Text, but the ability to link files together in a Wiki style allows you to organize ideas in any way you want, one file may lead to a dozen or more ideas that are related

    If you want to do something specific, Obsidian has a plethora of community created plugins that expand the functionality, in my case, I use obsidian to organize my classes both as a teacher and as a student, using local databases, calendars, dictionaries, slides, vector graphic drawings, excel-like tables, Anki connection, podcasts, and more

    Competitors: Notion, Evernote
    Pros:    Awesome community|Custom plugins|Local hosting|Beautiful themes|Highly customizable|Cloud storage|Becomes more useful over time|Markdown support
    Cons:    Seems complicated/complex at first|Takes time to set up your personal workspace|Overwhelming for first time user
  2. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    My personal knowledge-base of choice

    I've been using Obsidian for more than a year. It's been great. I think it offer a great balance of control, flexibility and extensibility. What is more, you own your own data, that's been a must-have feature for me. I just can't imagine putting all my knowledge into something that I don't have control over.

    I think two of the most popular alternatives that people consider are Logseq and Roam Research. Although Logseq is a bit different, it's considered compatible with Obsidian. Supposedly, you can use them with a shared database (files. Both use simple text files for storage). I tried that once, a few months ago. It worked, yet it messed up a bit my Obsidian files ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

    Competitors: Logseq, Roam Research

The 6 best note-taking apps in 2024
One thing to note: Notion bills itself as an Evernote competitor for personal users. It can be—but it's too much for most people, and its offline functionality isn't the best. If you love the idea of Notion, go right ahead and try the free Personal Plan, but for me, it's really best as a team notes app or an AI-powered notes app. Something like Obsidian (which we'll look at...
Source: zapier.com
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
This app is the kind of thing that, if you’re into it, will have you exploring its various ins, outs, and add-ons for days and weeks on end. Obsidian uses the Markdown format for its notes (which means they can be used on a variety of other apps). Your notes and other media are kept locally in a Vault (in other words, a main folder). There are ways to sync between devices...
The 5 Best Open Source Miro Alternatives in 2024
However, it's important to note that Obsidian's whiteboard functionality is not as robust as dedicated collaboration tools. While it lacks real-time basic collaboration features, Obsidian compensates with its vibrant plugin ecosystem, empowering users to customize their experience.
Source: affine.pro
The best encrypted note taking apps
For a consumer coming from Evernote, Notion, OneNote, or a similar product, we would advise trying Obsidian along another product on this list as it has the largest learning curve. However, if you are an expert with markdown, experts, linking, and graph views, Obsidian could be an excellent choice. Like many other configuration options, Obsidian leaves end-to-end encryption...
Source: www.skiff.com
Supercharge Your Productivity: Three Recommended Tools for Thought
One of my AP Productivity: Cohort mentors has a powerful system pairing Obsidian with OmniFocus. In OmniFocus, he builds his project and task structures, and in Obsidian he develops and organizes the project support materials as well as other relevant information. Because it’s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com

Google Forms Reviews

  1. Very convenient software!

    Helps my company solve many issues. We collect information from clients and employees. We conduct surveys and collect data. Very useful software. Helps form a common opinion, conduct analysis and analytics.

    Competitors: Survio
    Pros:    Speed|Visual|Functionality
  2. ✓ Adrian | Mobile Forms - Digital Inspections - Enterprise Checklists - Data collection
    · Marketing at Mobile Forms ·
    A good beginners tool to start your digital transformation.

    One of our customers said: Our small mining operation needed to go from paper based process to digital forms. At first, Google forms allowed us to use this Web-based platform that lets individuals and businesses of all sizes build customizable forms to conduct surveys and generate real-time response charts.

    We saw that a small sample of our field workers quickly adopted the new way of working.

    Step 1: accomplished.

    Now unto step 2.

    How do we deploy this unto our whole team? We needed email notifications, offline response collection when without wifi on the field. Our CIO and his director of operations needed deep data and trends analysis as well. Our inspectors, when doing their audits, needed to capture approx. 25 high definition pictures, some audio notes and a video which wasn't really possible with google forms.

    So, we can 100% credit the use of google forms to our transition towards a paperless process, but as we navigated saashub.com a little more, we were able to discover a world of alternatives. We strongly suggest to start using google forms before undergoing a big implementation plan towards such enterprise level inspection tools like nspek or even cheaper solutions like prontoforms.

    I am not sure if we would start with google's solution first if we would to do this digital transformation all over, but it did allow us to discover it's limits pretty quickly.

    At some point, we needed custom fields and functions, and none of us was able to code, so the nSpek training that comes with the application definitely sets it's self apart, giving us full autonomy.

    Competitors: nSpek, ProntoForms
    Pros:    No sign up cost
    Cons:    Customization|Customer support|Data protection and security|No video|No pictures

10 SurveyMonkey Alternatives and Competitors in 2024
Google Forms is a user-friendly platform that allows you to create forms effortlessly. With its intuitive interface, you can select from various question types, customize the design, and add logic for a seamless customer experience throughout.
Source: clickup.com
9 Survey Monkey Alternatives for Your 2024 Market Research
Google Forms will be your choice if you’re looking for a straightforward tool to create surveys without all the fuss. It’s particularly good for anyone who needs to whip up quick polls or surveys with a clean, user-friendly interface.
12 Easy Test Maker Alternatives
Google Forms is a Google Suite tool that comes with Google Drive. Users may quickly develop quizzes and get the results instantly, thanks to its simple and easy design
Alternatives to Deferendum
SurveyMonkey and Google Forms: These survey tools are designed for collecting feedback and data, whereas Deferendum is focused on group decision-making. Deferendum allows members to not only voice their opinions but also participate in the decision-making process and vote on proposed solutions.
Source: deferendum.com
Typeform Alternatives: Tools for Surveys, Forms, and Quizzes
Overall, online reviews suggest Typeform is like a paid version of Google Forms that doesn’t provide any benefits over the free tool. Moreover, Google Forms does not have a response limit, while that is Typeforms most prominent criticism.
Source: survicate.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 1523 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Obsidian mentions (1523)

  • Which Markdown editor to choose
    Inline preview, usually called WYSIWYG. Obsidian's Live Preview mode hides the syntax except where the cursor is. Obsidian is a far better personal knowledge base than anything else on this page, with backlinks, a graph and years of plugins, and if that is what you need the question of what its editor is called does not matter much. - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • I Built a Self-Evolving Knowledge Base — Here's the Architecture
    The stack is all open source: Obsidian, GBrain, Horizon, PGLite, and a couple of small Python scripts for the state machine and quality gates. None of the interesting parts are proprietary — the interesting part is the discipline. - Source: dev.to / 21 days ago
  • A Second Brain Your AI Agent Can Read
    Obsidian is a note-taking app that stores everything as Plain markdown files. It lets you organize and structure your notes in a Flexible way, and because the files are plain text on disk, anything that can Read a directory can read your notes, including an AI agent. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Bringing Notes, WeChat Reading, and Zhihu into Obsidian: My LLM-Wiki Knowledge Hub
    Install Obsidian: Download the client from obsidian.md and create a local Vault — just a local folder. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?
    Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/) Honestly its not huge and most are probably obvious, but those are what I immediately install on my machines. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
View more

Google Forms mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Google Forms yet. Tracking of Google Forms recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Obsidian and Google Forms, you can also consider the following products

Notion - All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

Survey Monkey - Create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results graphically and in real time. SurveyMonkey provides free online questionnaire and survey software.

Logseq - Logseq is a local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base.

Typeform - Create beautiful, next-generation online forms with Typeform, the form & survey builder that makes asking questions easy & human on any device. Try it FREE!

Joplin - Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.

Jotform - Free Online Form Builder & Form Creator